By Karen Bong
KUCHING, Jan 15: A number of hotels and institutions including service apartments in Sibu and Miri have been acquired to serve as quarantine centres following a surge in cases in the two divisions.
State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) chairman Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas, in revealing this, assured that there will be sufficient facilities to cater for quarantine purposes in the two divisions.
“Of course with the surge in cases like in Sibu, there will be issues on quarantine centres but that has been addressed as a number of hotels and institutions have been acquired.
“Preparations have been done to make sure the places are sufficient. The same for Miri where new places will be readied such as service apartments,” he told a press conference on Covid-19 update today.
On efforts to curb Covid-19 in Sarawak, Uggah who is also Deputy Chief Minister pointed out that the private sector has been roped in to enhance the capacity of the State Health Department.
“We will continue with aggressive contact tracing and testing. In the aspect of screenings which is carried out by the State Health Department, now the private laboratories are also involved.
“They will increase the testing capacity on a daily basis to make sure that the result can be obtained within 24 hours while the testing kits are also sufficient,” he explained.
Noting that some results could take about 36 hours to come out, Uggah hopes more screenings can be done at a faster rate with the assistance from the private sector and increased in capacity by the Health Department. -DayakDaily
